With a 50-year career as a choreographer and solo dancer, Margie Gillis will blow out 70 candles on July 9, 2023.
Speaking to Marie-Gabrielle Ménard, the woman who introduced contemporary dance to China talks about the notion of risk that her parents, champion downhill skiers, always encouraged her to defy. As a young girl, she rarely attended school, a place she found hostile. Her art was her greatest teacher. The songs of Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Gilles Vigneault, Sinead O’Connor and the poetry of Paul Éluard and Emily Dickinson have inspired iconic works in her vast repertoire. Since 1973, Margie Gillis is said to have created over 200 dance pieces, and she remembers every one of them.
CREDITS
Ideation, animation, production: Marie-Gabrielle Ménard
Production support: Julien Sahuquillo
Research: Sandrine Deschênes, Doris Grenier
Tribute letter: Linda Rabin
With testimonials from: Andrée Martin, Pierre Lavoie, Alisia Pobega, Jack Udashkin, Linda Rabin, Geneviève Boulet
Editing: Marie-Gabrielle Ménard, Louis Dufort, Jean-François Roy
Original music: Louis Dufort
Storytelling: Éric Robidoux, Marie-Michelle Borduas
Sound: Tayaout-Nicolas, Xavier Madore
Archives: Société Radio-Canada
Photo: Denis Dulude
Visual: Denis Dulude
Video: La conserve média
FAIRE CORPS was made possible thanks to the invaluable support of the Quebec government and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Thanks to Télé-Québec’s Fabrique culturelle.
Thanks to Espace Perreault Choreographic transmission and the Bibliothèque de la danse Vincent-Warren. Marie-Gabrielle thanks Louis Dufort, Denis Dulude, Xavier Madore, Anne-Marie Garand, Tayaout-Nicolas, Jean-François Roy, Julien Sahuquillo, Francis Leduc, Guylaine Bombardier, Stéphanie Gagnon, Enora Rivière, Sandrine Deschênes, Katia-Marie Germain, Olivier Desjardins, Sophie Pelletier, Sébastien Roldan, Amélie Bruneau-Longpré, Camille Sabbagh, Justine Latour, Doris Grenier and Michel Ménard.Podcast: With a 50-year career as a choreographer and solo dancer, Margie Gillis blew out 70 candles on July 9, 2023.